#small friends in nature

[bloomingraine]

SMALL FRIENDS IN NATURE

Photography by @bloomingraine

Year 2023

THE START

Meet the Small Friends: Little Miss Chichi the Mushroom, Quite Angelic Lacy the Duck, and Somehow Cheeky Veron the Frog! They're preparing to go off to an adventure in nature.

Let's see how it goes!

HIKING

Quite Angelic Lacy the Duck seems to be regretting this idea. How about we cheer him on?

Let's go, Quite Angelic Lacy! You're almost at the top!

MOUNTAIN ROCK

It looks like Little Miss Chichi the Mushroom was the first one to reach the top of Mountain Rock!

Good job, Little Miss Chichi!

TREE

Somehow Cheeky Veron the Frog found a tree! Don't they look cute standing next to it?

You're doing great, Somehow Cheeky Veron!

HIDE & SEEK

It seems like the Small Friends are playing hide and seek! How adorable!

...But who's the seeker?

[sysig]

Ellen McLain’s commentary from my trivia playthrough

[justanechoflower]

Frisk good job on asserting dominance. Now flowey shall not cross you.

21/25 - Daredevil

[firebugseverywhere]

I filled up my own insect house last weekend. There's already been a lot going on.

It's mostly for mason bees, or, at least they are the only ones who have moved in so far. A few other insects have crawled over it. :-)

Here, the left photo shows a pile of pollen, which is the food source the mason bees provide for their eggs, later larvae and grown bee. They build cell for cell, wall for wall, and in between they put their pollen and one single egg. They do this until the straw or whatever cavity they chose to use is full. Then they build one last wall, as seen in the right photo. When the baby bees are eventually grown up, they bite their way through the wall to break free.

Now you might wonder, how does the first bee break free if it's all the way in the back of the straw? The answer is pretty cool. Male bees hatch sooner than female ones. The mother bee knows which sex their egg has, since fertilized eggs are always female and unfertilized ones are male. They purposely fertilize the eggs they're planning to put in the back and lay the unfertilized ones in the front cells. That's quite awesome if you ask me.

Now a less funny info. There are parasites in the insect house as well.

Cacoxenus indagator is a species of fruit fly and a kleptoparasite, meaning that they lay their eggs in the nests of other insects. This one lays them in mason bee nest cells specifically. There, the fly matures and in the process feeds on the pollen that mother bee collected for its own child. In a lot of instances the bee starves to death. If it manages to survive, it is weakened and might die quicker.

I contemplated and wondered what I could do to prevent this. I thought maybe I should kill the flies. They're not quick to fly away and would be easy to smoosh. Then I thought a little more. I found that that would be against my own standards.

Parasites don't choose to be parasites, in fact I doubt that they make a lot of choices all together. They have their own place in the system called eco, and each individual has its right to be.

The fact that bees are dying in high numbers isn't a fly's fault. It wouldn't make sense to punish it for something that we did.

So, I think making an insect house taught me a good lesson. It's nice how things turn out sometimes. Also, the bees are fuzzy and have crawled up my fingers a few times heeheehee

[nat-20s]

Me for several years: worst part of being single is I can't do couples cosplay

Me in my twenties realizing that I can just have tall friends to couples cosplay with me: >:)

[marjitea]

[orofeaiel]

Found THREE batches of insect-egg slime mold on my lunch walk :)

[uncanny-tranny]

Death to the idea that people who face a traumatic situation must become empty husks of a person between the event that traumatized them and when they are ~magically~ healed. It's genuinely fucked up.

Often, people who are traumatized will interact with the world just like a "normal" person would. They might even joke about their trauma, laugh about it, even "make light" of it.

When I was a very young child, I'd been traumatized, and I was put into play therapy. From what I remember, though, I'd be a very normal child until something seemingly small triggered me, and it was like my world fell apart. And I'd cope with that in ungodly ways that to a normal person would be insane - unthinkable, perhaps. And then... I'd go back to playing, because the world continues on.

That is what many people (though not all, trauma responses are not a monolith) who face trauma will do. We're still "normal people." The world goes on even after ours stops in orbit, slows, or has a metor crash into it. The reason why it's so harmful to say that traumatized people have to "act the part" is because many of us don't, and simply, most of us can't (even if we need to).

[awakenthebeing]

What does Piepoe think of the other clones?

Not much!

She's actually pretty calm about any other clone he sees, whether it be a fake peppino kind of clone, or a peppino clone from the WAR level. It doesn't mind their presence, but does get a bit aggressive if they play a little too harshly with one of their little toppin friends. The clones don't mean to play too rough, they just get too excited and lick, causing a bit of damage!

Frog friends....

[wantbytaemin]

happy bday to my number one guy, king of my heart and the true big boss, M @linoguy 💖🤎

[novelconcepts]

fleeting

Van's always been the kind of person who develops fleeting crushes on friends. There's a kind of relief in the temporary nature of these feelings before they level out. She doesn't mind.

Most of the time.

(based on conversation with @owltrifecta)

T, 6807 words

Some things, Van reasons, just aren’t meant to last. Some things aren’t meant to last, and that’s fine. More than fine. Refreshing. Fantastic, in its own way. They’re like summer rainstorms: brief, punchy, and easily forgotten. Not everything’s like this. Her mother’s always predictable, always gonna be. Off at five, drunk by six: the Vicky Palmer way. Movies, too, are a certainty. Feelings for Michelle Pfeiffer, for example, are eternal; god bless Grease 2, god bless Catwoman. But other things—things like the warm, gooey feelings that drum up when another girl laughs at her jokes—don’t stick around long. It’s good that way. Reassuring. None of them last, so there’s no reason to worry. No reason to think about it much at all.

[17yearcicada]

they should invent a communicating with people that doesn't feel like sort of ripping out your heart and asking someone to judge it

[neolxzr]

sorry back on my aira bullshit it sucks that a character who is mixed race becomes the one written as racist it sucks so bad (another reason why I latched onto aira is bc I'm also mixed)

cryn if I ever rewrite the aira scenes or put my own spin on them I will be in your asks immediately with em

PLEASE DO i would love to read it. ive honestly thought about doing something like that before but never had the confidence to so i would love love to see your interpretation

it really does suck. and like i wont give akira or happyele that much credit the handling of him being mixed race is a little lackluster honestly but its still there and part of his character so it sucks that he ended up being the one that they write that way. it also like. doesnt really make sense considering alkaloid's theming as all being people who are marginalized in different ways

[firebugseverywhere]

Agrypnus murinus

A click beetle! Yay! :-D

I didn't want to check if it actually clicked because if I remember the videos correctly, they only do that when they're stressed.

In German they're called "mouse-grey fast-beetles" which is pretty funny. :-)

[mothmonarch]

Might be a little scarce for a few days - time for some summer adventures with a friend! The sale is still running & commissions will resume next week. 🐛☀ Hope you have something to smile about coming up!

[marjitea]